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Abstract

It is widely recognized in the semiconductor industry that getting to defect-free extreme ultraviolet
(EUV) mask blanks is critical in achieving high volume chip manufacturing yield beyond the 22 nm half-pitch
node. Total defectivity of an EUV mask blank depends on the defectivity of substrate and finished
mask blank. Finished mask blanks are normally subjected to a cleaning process to get rid of the loosely
adhered particles on the top. This is normally done in a spin-spray mask cleaning tool using traditional
mask cleaning processes. It is important that this cleaning process does not degrade the properties of
the multilayer blank or introduce additional particles or pits during the process. However, standard
cleaning processes used to clean multilayer blanks result in EUV reflectivity loss, loss of uniformity in
reflectivity, increased roughness and adds pits and particles on mask blanks. The standard cleaning
process used consists of multiple steps, each of which may cause the oxidation of Ru capping layer as
well as other underlying bilayers, etching of the multilayer stack and increased roughness of the bilayers
thus leading to a loss in EUV reflectivity. It is a challenging task to experimentally correlate the
processing steps to the resulting damage and to quantify the reflectivity loss. Furthermore, due to the
high cost of materials we have not been able to do extensive experiments to determine the root cause
of problems. In this work, we have combined mask blank cleaning using standard processes, TEM cross
section studies and simulations to quantify the impact of the multilayer oxidation, etching and
roughness on the EUV reflectivity loss and mask blank degradation.

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Advanced PhotonicsJournal of Applied Remote SensingJournal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and SystemsJournal of Biomedical OpticsJournal of Electronic ImagingJournal of Medical ImagingJournal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMSJournal of NanophotonicsJournal of Photonics for EnergyNeurophotonicsOptical EngineeringSPIE Reviews